Green Weenie of the Week: Jerry’s Kids, or Kerry’s Lids?

Competition for Power Line’s Green Weenie Award this week is the most intense it has ever been. This week the climatistas are holding a climate hootenanny in San Francisco call the “Global Climate Action Summit,” whose carbon footprint remains unstated as of the moment. And in the same week that Gov. Jerry Brown, the summit’s host, signed into law a King Canute-style bill requiring California to get 100 percent of its electricity from non-carbon sources by 2045, we discover that the climatistas aren’t happy with Brown. At all. They’re attacking him for the sin of not plunging California immediately into the dark ages, with this billboard downtown (I drove by it on the way to the San Francisco airport yesterday):

Activists point to 20,000 new oil and gas exploration permits issued on Brown’s watch, including 238 for offshore state waters. Thousands of other state and federal offshore leases that predate Brown’s administration remain on the books.

Consumer Watchdog and other groups also point out that Brown has taken $9.8 million in fossil fuel industry money for his various campaigns, causes and initiatives since he began running for governor in 2009. . .

About 800 environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth, Californians Against Fracking, Breast Cancer Action and Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, have signed on in support of the “Brown’s Last Chance” website campaign. It calls on the governor to commit the state to a policy of “no new fossil fuels and … real action on climate change and healthier communities.”

My very favorite of the story is this bit about Greenpeace official Annie Leonard meeting with Brown:

Leonard says Brown has been willing to talk. The two had a 2½-hour sit-down in April to go over their differences, but she said that “there are no answers he gave us that will satisfy us.”

That’s because these crazy people can’t be satisfied. You know you’re nuts when even Jerry Brown is defective. I’m just going to think of them as Jerry’s Kids.

Meanwhile, the heavy-lidded John Kerry is obviously competing for a Green Weenie with his suggestion this week that Donald Trump be sued in court for the lives lost to climate change. Of course, the plaintiffs will have to stand in line at the courthouse behind the people killed by ending net neutrality, and the people who are going to die because of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who is apparently now the Thanos of jurisprudence—a true Marvel indeed.

Honorable mention, however, goes to the Washington Post, for this phone-it-in editorial that is lazy even by the low standards of editorial page writing:

. . . Yet when it comes to extreme weather, Mr. Trump is complicit. He plays down humans’ role in increasing the risks, and he continues to dismantle efforts to address those risks.

If only Trump had remained in the toothless Paris Accord, and agreed to shovel $100 billion a year in bribes to developing nations, I’m sure Hurricane Florence wouldn’t have formed. Sophisticates in the media used to scoff at the Rev. Pat Robertson praying for a hurricane to pass by Virginia Beach, but fail to recognize that believing that diplomatic totems such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Climate Accord will change the climate requires an even bigger leap of faith than the Rev. Robertson ever needed. At least Robertson has an omnipotent God with a track record of miracles to beseech.

Reminder: which nation has reduced greenhouse gas emissions the most over the last decade? Yes, that would be the United States. Which nation is likely to reduce emissions the most over the next ten years, no matter what Trump does? Yup—most likely the United States again. (Emissions in Germany and some other European countries are actually rising again.) The climatistas really need to get a grip. In the meantime, we’ll send them all some Green Weenies to hold on to.